


i am not what i want to be (you are not what i want you to be)

by procrastinatingbookworm



Series: Hello, I'm good for nothing - will you love me just the same? [14]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Chronic Pain, Dissociation, Established Relationship, Fainting, Hiding Medical Issues, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Injury, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Other, Self-Esteem Issues, not graphic but something in the realm of medical gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27461524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: Tiso's lack of self-preservation comes back to bite him.
Relationships: Hornet & Quirrel (Hollow Knight), Hornet & Tiso (Hollow Knight), Quirrel/Tiso (Hollow Knight)
Series: Hello, I'm good for nothing - will you love me just the same? [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1957039
Comments: 14
Kudos: 77





	i am not what i want to be (you are not what i want you to be)

Tiso’s arm is numb.

It’s been numb for a while now, going in pieces—the wound first, then from the wound to his wrist, then his palm, then his fingers.

He’s trying not to think about it.

He knows he should tell Quirrel—he should have told Quirrel when it started, but in his defense it’s been a hectic few days. There’s been more on his mind than his broken arm hurting less than the rest of him.

Now that they all have a moment to breathe, though, his wrung-out mind drifts back to the empty space where his arm should be and lingers there.

Tiso’s never really had good instincts. He’s always been apt to act first and think later, even in his more rational moments.

Still, something in the back of his head pounds at his awareness, telling him  _ something’s wrong, this is wrong. _

That being said, his mind’s been telling him that something’s wrong with his body for a long time now, and listening to it has never changed anything before.

About halfway up the well, Tiso forgets about his arm. He forgets about anything that’s hurting him, anything that he wants or feels or needs. 

This isn’t quite a colony, this assembly of broken bugs, but it’s close enough that Tiso loses himself, just enough that it doesn’t occur to him to do or say anything more than what he’s asked, up until Cornifer and Iselda—and Ghost, never one to stay put anywhere—shut the creaky door of the house behind them.

Absently, he glances around. The house is large—nowhere near as cramped as the first one they shared, but sparse, except for the three of them. 

Holly is lying on two mattresses—pulled from the rickety two-tiered bed at the end of the room—laid end-to-end, piled under blankets and propped up on pillows. They don’t seem to be sleeping, but it doesn’t look like they’re going to be moving anytime soon, either.

Hornet is murmuring to herself, repeating the instructions the bugs gave her, as though they might fall through her claws if she doesn’t.

(Tiso wishes she were an ant, so he could take her in his arms and clean her antennae with his forearm, so that she would know that he wants to protect her without him having to lay the words out in their only shared language, flat and ugly and lacking nuance.)

Absently, Tiso digs his foreclaws into his arm, just above where the feeling stops.

“Tiso?” Quirrel asks, in that soft voice of his that just about forces Tiso to turn around and kiss him.

Quirrel chuffs a quiet, husky laugh, grasping Tiso by the upper elbows, and Tiso’s chest floods with warmth so violently that he almost topples into Quirrel’s chest.

“Careful,” Quirrel says, the laugh still in his voice, one hand dropping to Tiso’s broken-numb arm, fingers hooking into the sling just slightly, and— 

—and Tiso’s vision goes blank with pain.

He comes to, head spinning, to Quirrel saying his name in a frantic, broken voice that Tiso  _ hates, _ that he doesn’t want to ever hear again—that he  _ didn’t _ want to hear ever again after the first time, in the Temple, and if he never makes Quirrel feel that way again it’ll be too soon.

“It’s not healed,” Hornet is saying, suddenly right beside Tiso and above him, a hand on the upper elbow on his broken arm, which isn’t in the sling, instead resting in Quirrel’s trembling hands.

Tiso feels sick with shame.

He’s lying on the ground, cradled between two bugs he wishes he could protect and instead keeps forcing to protect  _ him. _

“I don’t fault you for not noticing,” Hornet is saying, more limbs emerging from under her red cloak, steadying Quirrel’s hands. “It looks like it’s healing, but the shell has only grown over the surface.

She moves Quirrel’s hands, which move Tiso’s arm more into the light of the recently-refilled lumafly lamp.

Ghost had spent a long time cleaning the dead lumaflies out of it before they let anyone fill it again, Tiso’s mind fixates on, instead of the way Quirrel’s face twists in disgust and then in horror-shock-pity-grief at the fact that a bit of Tiso’s arm is a see-through scab of chitin, haemo moving under the surface.

“Oh good, you’re conscious,” Hornet says. “Move your hand.”

Tiso tries.

Quirrel squeezes Tiso’s good hand. “Tiso.”

“I’m trying, Q,” Tiso snaps, and it comes out twisted, damp and heavy like river stones. “I can’t.”

Hornet breathes out, heavily. “How long?”

“It’s been numb for about three… rests,” Tiso says, fumbling, since there isn’t really a word for  _ day  _ or  _ night _ in Hallownest’s dialect of Wyrmtongue, considering the stasis.

“Tiso,” Quirrel says, in that  _ awful _ voice, and Tiso wants to pull every single tiny hair off both of his antennae. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“In his defense,” Hornet says. “It’s been rather hectic. I can imagine it slipped his mind.”

It should make Tiso feel better, but it just gives the shame another layer; that she has to make excuses for him, she doesn’t even  _ know _ him—

Quirrel looks pitiful. Tiso  _ feels _ pitiful. Hornet’s gaze is measured and calculating,  _ clinical _ , as though Tiso means nothing to her, just another broken bit of Hallownest to tie back together with her silk.

(He’s glad his mind is too muddled to say much, because saying that would ruin everything, and Tiso is so tired of things being ruined.)

“What do we do?” Quirrel asks.

Hornet shrugs. “Tiso will know better than I do.”

Tiso, under the heat of their gazes, shrugs. “Either it heals or it falls off. Either way I won’t be useful for a while.”

There’s a heady pause.

“I’ll take first watch,” Quirrel says, something that Tiso is terrified is  _ hurt _ in his voice, snatching his nail from beside the door before he leaves.

Hornet brings him a blanket from off Holly’s pile. He wraps it around himself, sits against the wall, and watches Hornet spin herself a nest until he can’t keep his eyes open anymore.


End file.
